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Shire rejects chook farm bid

A planning application to build a chicken farm in the Baw Baw Shire could end up at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) for the third time.

Ballywarra Farms want to build a broiler farm at Modella, big enough to house 400,000 birds in eight sheds.

This week, shire councillors rejected the project.

Mayor Murray Cook says the project has already been rejected at VCAT twice but its owners are likely to fight the council's decision at the tribunal again.

"When it went to VCAT last time, the roads to be used to gain access for the broiler farm and the new council also thought the buffer zone which took up the neighbour's property was something they didn't like," he said.

"Flooding, drainage and matters such as that, odour, all those things that come [from] living in the vicinity of a broiler farm."